Hat to host pickleball provincials

By JAMES TUBB on February 25, 2022.

jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb

The Medicine Hat Pickleball game is stepping up this summer.

The 2022 Pickleball Alberta Provincial Championships will take place in the Hat, at the new 20-court facility at the Big Marble Go Centre from July 8-10. It will be the first major tournament hosted at the new facility.

Tournament director Brenda Lea MacPhail told the News they are super excited to host the event.

“It’s something that as a club you work towards and it’s a goal that is always out there, but now we finally have the facility, the capacity and the volunteers to do something like this, it’s tremendous,” MacPhail said.

The three-day event will welcome 350-plus players from across the province. It will also be the inaugural closed provincial tournament, which means only pickleballers from Alberta will be competing. MacPhail said other provincial tournaments have featured athletes from other provinces.

She said she thinks the athletes coming from outside the city will be jealous of the new facilities in the Hat.

“Those courts are state-of-the-art, world-class courts and I think they are going to be the envy of an awful lot of people from across Canada because they’ve just been done and done right,” MacPhail said. “We’ve had amazing sponsorship on them and lots of people coming forward wanting to become members now. The whole philosophy behind ‘build it and they will come,’ is really true with these new courts.”

MacPhail herself has played pickleball for four years. She said she was asked by a group of ladies to try it out and has loved the social aspect of the game ever since.

“I know I am going to get a really good workout from it and the social aspect of the game is absolutely brilliant,” MacPhail said. “Some of my best friends are pickleball players that we’ve met by just wondering on a court somewhere.”

MacPhail said former Medicine Hat mayor Ted Clugston really pushed for the new courts and wants to make sure he gets his “kudos.”

“He knew there was a need, saw the sport was growing in our community and knew their was an economic benefit of hosting tournaments of this nature in the future,” MacPhail said.

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